Nervous About the Gym

When I took a job that involved a lot of travel, one of my plans was to ensure I exercise on the road. It's a good use of time and is a lot better than just sitting around a hotel room. So today, on day two of my new job, I hit up a new gym.

This is not the first time I have gone to a new gym location. There have been different gym with the Canadian Forces and since moving to Ottawa and obtaining a Goodlife Fitness membership, i have used a few of their locations. In fact, that's one of the best benefits of Goodlife Fitness, your membership is good at any of their locations.

Before every time I go to a new location I feel nervous.

Once I get going the nerves go away and I get down to business but why am I nervous in the first place? There are probably a few reasons. There may be different equipment that isn't quite what I'm used to and I will have to adapt. When you are pushing yourself to the limit, you want it to go as planned. There may not be all the equipment you want. i haven't seen this problem with Goodlife Fitness but often the exercise room in a hotel is severely lacking.

I think maybe the biggest thing for me is I don't want to look new. It's a bit vain but I want to seem like I know what I'm doing and I know where the next piece of equipment is. Also, I don't want to interrupt someone else's experience because I don't know where to find the quad extension machine.

I know that there should be no reason to be nervous about exercising in a different location. I know I'm not going cause any grief for others and it will have everything I need to get the job done. Nonetheless, it is interesting that I feel this way every time I use a new facility.

On the Road Again

For the last eight and a half years I lived in Winnipeg I traveled a lot for my job. I was away from home an average of one-hundred days every year. I missed a lot of things and my friends were often annoyed. There were times I really didn't like it.

I'm writing this from a hotel room in Mississauga. Tomorrow I am starting a new job with a lot of travel. It is a Territory Manager position in Eastern Ontario and I'm real excited to start the job.

When I looked back over my working life, I found that I enjoyed my job the most when I was travelling a lot. Because of this I will now be travelling on a regular basis. I think what I like the most is the variety that work travel provides. When you don't go to the same place everyday and see the same people, it can be a lot easier to deal with the annoying folks out there. I'm not big on routine so this will work well.

I also have a plan to exercise while on the road. It sure beats sitting in my hotel room and twiddling my thumbs one night every week. I'll be able to stay in shape and make good use of my time on the road.

It feels a bit like I'm going home. I will be travelling regularly and I will be once again working in building materials. I grew up in that industry, literally. My wonderful father owned a lumber yard when I grew up. It feels really right and being someone who identifies with what he does for a living, it is important to believe in who you work for and what you do.

Again, I'm taking on a new adventure. This one feels like it will fit really well. Of course, only time will tell but I was happy when I was travelling and once again, I will be travelling.

Facebook is Only the Platform

If you are a Facebook user, your timeline is probably filling up with one minute videos recapping what people have posted over their time on the grand-daddy of social networks. It is a nice way to look back as the site has now been around for a decade.

There have been a lot of changes to Facebook in the last decade as they try to remain relevant. Some have worked out well and some have not. It is like every product, if you don't try to move forward you will slip back. 

I have heard a lot of complaints about Facebook. A few are about what the company has done with the site but many more are about how there is too much drama or how you can't just post what you want because some people may react badly.

Facebook is only the platform that is used to display user generated content. It does produce a permanent record of the conversation but it is not the site that is saying mean things, its the users you choose to connect with. If you are not having a positive experience with Facebook because of the content, don't blame Mark et al. You need to look at what you are saying and who you are saying it to.

I try to only post positive things on Facebook. I don't always succeed but if I do get some negative feedback, it is easy to go back over it since everything is recorded. If you find there is too much drama on Facebook, leaving Facebook will not remove that drama from your life because you are still going to be connected to the same people in your physical life.

Facebook may or may not be around for ever. I think it depends on how easy it is for users to share and restrict the information they want. If it is easy to do what people want, it has the critical mass to be around for a long time. If you don't like what people are saying on Facebook, you need to look at the people in your life and if they are really the type of people you want to engage with. Facebook isn't the problem, it only highlights the problem.

How to Buy a Car

I used to sell cars. One of the biggest questions my friends asked me is, how do I get a good deal? There are a lot of places to read up on it on the internet but I will share my thoughts.

Before we discuss what you have to do, it's important to understand the business. Think about all the radio ads you hear from car dealerships. They are not trying to convince you to buy a specific brand of car. They are trying to convince you to buy the brand you want at their location. It is the only business I can think of where franchises of the same brand all-out compete for customers with each other. Those loud commercials all say we sell the most cars and if you go to another dealership, you are paying too much. No matter what car you buy, keep that in mind.

If the dealership is having a sale, especially if there is someone there representing the manufacturer on the premises to facilitate the sale, you are probably going to get the same price as any other day. No matter what car you buy, keep that in mind.

Most customers that leave a dealership without buying a car, never come back and buy. This is not lost on the people who sell cars so they will do everything they can to get you to buy today. The more of their time you take, the more likely they will do something to get you to buy. No matter what car you buy, keep that in mind.

The car business is full of uneducated alpha-males. You don't have to be really smart to sell cars and most people who sell cars only have a high-school education. I'm not saying that many are not very good at what they do, if they stick around, they are good at it. However, a good car salesman is good for the dealership, not necessarily good for the customer. No matter what car you buy, keep that in mind.

Now that we have a bit of background, here's what you do to get a better deal.

Do your research. You can build and price your new car on the internet. Take advantage of this. Build the car you want with the options you want. Know what price the car you want is. Print it off, and take it with you. Then you have have information with you. 

Call ahead and make an appointment. This will save you a lot of time, especially in the winter. They will have the car you are interested in up front and warmed up. A lot of the background items will be taken care of before you arrive. If you know someone who sells cars, you can set your appointment with them and you won't end up with a salesman that you don't like.

If you have a smart phone, load a payment calculator app and know how to use it. Put all the numbers in to see what you are actually paying. It is not unusual for the desking manager to pad the deal with a couple of thousand dollars in the beginning if they think you are going to try to negotiate the price down. That way you may still end up paying full price but you think you have worked a good deal. If you use your payment calculator after each price is discussed, you will protect yourself and throw the dealership off their game.

Take a notebook and write your own notes. As the process moves forward, refer back to your notes. If there are things you want in the deal, that they do not want to make happen, they will try to get you excited to buy a car and forget about some of the details. They don't want to deal with things like winter tires and rims. If you bring it up early they will try to get you to focus on the car. If you roll winter tires into the deal, you will be paying for them. Make sure you know much they are charging for each of the extras.

When they ask you where you want your payment to be, go low. Don't give them a range. The only number they will look at is the highest number. If you say $450 to $500 a month, all you have said is $500 a month. If you can comfortably handle $500 a month, say $200 bi-weekly. They will most likely quote the payment bi-weekly because the number is smaller. Keep in mind that if you pay bi-weekly, there are 26 payments a year. Twice a year, you will be paying three times in a month. There a lot of ways to get you into the payment you want. They can put a bit more money into your trade. They can reduce the price of the car. They can stretch your payments out over a longer term. The only way they want to reduce your payment is to stretch the term because that doesn't cost them any money. If the full price doesn't fit into your stated budget, they will try to get you to spend a few dollars a payment more. If you quote well under what you are comfortable with, and stand your ground, you can negotiate them into something close to what you want. You also need some room in your payment to take care of the the items sold to you in the business office.

The manufacturers often have rebates available. Make sure they are applied to the price of the car. There should be no effort to get the rebate. It doesn't cost the dealership anything to apply the rebates. Don't let the dealership stop at the manufacturers rebates. They still have some room to move.

If they don't have the car with the features you want, they will try to switch you to something on the lot. It may have more features or less. If it has more, you are in a great position. You can go in and say, I didn't want that feature and try to get a price reduction because of it. You may not get the option for free but you may get a substantial reduction. You have to stay on that point. If you let it slip, they will try to get you to forget about it. Take notes about what is on the car that you don't want, and refer back to it.

Don't be afraid to get up and walk out if you don't like the deal or how you are being treated. Remember the golden rule, he who has the gold makes the rules. You are the person with the money. All the dealership has is a car for the sole purpose to sell. In the end, the customer holds all the cards. You can just get up and walk out and you are in the same place you were when you walked in. Even if it is the car is a perfect fit, you don't have to buy it from them. You can go to the dealership down the street and have them dealer locate the car you were just negotiating on. If you don't like the deal, don't agree to buy the car.

The dealership will probably not give you numbers unless they think you are going to buy today. If you walk out with numbers you can go to the competition and they will beat it by a couple of bucks every time. This is why you have to have a low budget. The dealership is not going to try to get the price below your budget. So if you say $200 bi-weekly, the price will magically come out to about $205 bi-weekly. They will fiddle with the term or put a bit more into the trade to get the payment where you want it. So, if you know this, use it. If you want to be at $200 bi-weekly, say $175. They will stretch the term but you will get the payment you want.

Ask specific questions. They will try to gloss over the details that may cost you more than it should. So you can protect yourself by asking what the price is for that feature. Don't settle for the about $300 answer. We have the technology for them to know exactly what the package costs so find out. This is critical if it is a feature that you don't want. Write down the number in your notes and refer back to it when you are working out the price.

When it's time to work out the financing remember the Business Manager is really just another salesman. They are going to try to sell you an extended warranty, rust proofing, undercoating, and a bunch of other options. Remember, everything is in negotiable in this business and the margins in the business office are huge. People let their guard down and everything they gained on the sales floor goes out the window on the business office. 

I can't speak for other jurisdictions but in Ontario, cars are specifically excluded from the 10 day cooling off period under the Consumer Protection Act. Once you sign and give a deposit, you own the car. There is no legal protection to back out of the deal. Be aware.

What it really boils down to is car salesmen try to get you to forget about the the things that will cost them money and to buy a car today, preferably one that is on the lot. They try to take advantage of the fact that you don't negotiate a car deal everyday but they do. They will use their process to help you buy a car on their terms. If you take your own notes, check everything with a payment calculator and remain firm on your position you can and will get a good deal. There are scummy and honest car salesmen out there. In reality it doesn't matter what kind you get if you protect yourself and the easiest way to protect yourself is to know what they are trying to achieve and how they are working to get there.

The Warm Sector of a Complex Low

One of the nastiest weather situations is when you are in the warm sector of a complex low. If the low along a front is deep enough it will significantly bend the front until the is a wedge of warm air surrounded by cold air. It results in a lot of precipitation and general misery. One the cold front passes, the weather will return to more normal conditions.

It doesn't sound too bad, except in the winter.

Last night it warmed up quite a bit and rained most of the night. The nice part of the rain is to did beat back a bunch of snow but now the cold front has passed and everything is starting to freeze. Weather like this reeks havoc on a city. The roads ad sidewalks turn to skating rinks. The plummeting temperature combined with the whipping wind makes being outside miserable and it worsens by the second. It's not nice at all.

Today in Ottawa, we are experiencing this.

There are a few lakes from the rain and if you are parked in the lake, you may be there until the next warm day. I was standing in three inches of water on top of ice and the wind was blowing me along. Thankfully I did not fall down, that would have ruined my day.

The good part of bad weather is it does not last forever. This will pass and we will be back to typical winter weather, where if you dress for it, you can be outside. Travel to where you need to be will get easier and life will resume.

Ottawa has been having a rather vigorous winter. The Rideau Canal was open before New Year's Eve for the first time in a decade. It's been cold, it keeps snowing and it doesn't look like its going to let up anytime soon.

Being Canadian means you like to talk about the weather and right now the weather is not nice in the nation's capital, but like all things, good and bad, it will change.

Immunize

Despite some very convincing scientific evidence there seems to be an ongoing debate on immunization against infectious diseases. I came upon a rather lengthy, heated, and interesting debate on Facebook. I weighed in but I have a bit more to say.

In my mind, unless you are going to have an allergic reaction, you should be immunized. The benefits to yourself and your community far outweigh the risks or costs (at least in Canada where universal health care provides the vaccination and injection service without direct cost to the end user.) That being said, a lot of people are dead set against immunizing themselves or their children.

One of the biggest problems in the debate about immunization is the people who work in public health and know about this kind of stuff are really smart. Now, don't get me wrong, we want smart people in charge of this kind of stuff. The problem is people tend to live, work, and socialize with people similar to themselves. So these really smart people spend the vast majority of their time with really smart people. Now, smart people like to be accurate in their communication, and as such, they usually develop very deep and broad vocabularies. 

This is where the problem starts to set in.

Wait a minute, immunization is a very serious thing. We are exposing millions of people to the disease we are trying to prevent. Don't we want the people in charge of this to be very accurate when they are doing what they do to make and test vaccines? When the smart people are talking to each other we absolutely do, when they are talking to the general public, maybe not.

Since changing jobs and dealing with the public on a regular basis I have relearned that most people communicate in a simple way. A lot of people don't like 'big words' and would rather use three or four simple words than one obscure but accurate word to get their point across. So when the really smart people argue with science, too many people tune out and turn to pseudo-science or celebrities for their information.

Jenny McCarthy has been a strong advocate against immunization and a lot of people are buying her message. She's not a scientist so, why?

As a matter of full disclosure, I did have posters of Jenny McCarthy hanging in my house when I went to university. However, it was not her scientific knowledge that I was admiring. Since my mom reads my blog from time to time we will just leave it at that.

I don't know how deep or broad Jenny McCarthy's vocabulary is but when she speaks publicly, she uses simple words and short phrases. It's easy to understand. So when she presents her argument, everyone understands what she is trying to say. It doesn't mean what she is saying is correct but if you are not educated about immunization, what she says is plausible and understandable. Her message gets through, which is critically important.

The idea of immunization is scary. Vaccinations are constructed in a lab and contains the very disease you are trying to prevent. That's not very natural. There are a lot of people that believe if it is natural it can't be that harmful. The has long been central to the argument provided by the pro-weed lobby. That's not a very strong argument. Arsenic is natural, it's not made in a lab or a factory. If you ingest it, you will end up good and dead.

Another argument you often hear is you can take natural herbs to boost your immunity, they are plants and not harmful. If your argument is something is safe because it's a plant, feel free to roll around in poison ivy and let me know how that works out for you.

There are a few things that don't look good for immunizing yourself. Some people take the vaccination and still get sick while others don't take it and don't. Many vaccinations are delivered by needle and a lot of people don't like needles. Most people feel a bit under the weather for a few hours after taking. Some people have bad reactions leading to long term problems. These are tough things to overcome.

Today, I don't know what the message should be to get everyone who can be immunized to take the vaccine. I'm not educated in that area but I know something about communicating.

The message must be delivered so that a dishwasher at an all-night diner understands and accepts it. It can't use scientific terms. It needs to get the point across without using percentages, outliers, or any rate. If you use numbers they need to be small whole numbers. The really smart people need a message that makes sense to someone who doesn't see the value in finishing high-school or washing their hands after using the toilet.

I admit it is not an easy task but if Coca-Cola can convince hundreds of millions of people to regularly consume a beverage that has no value or benefit then there is hope.

It's Winnipeg Cold

Cold weather does something to people. If you know how to handle it or are just simply willing to put mind over matter, it will help you rise above others. A lot of people are simply defeated by the cold.

I don't like the cold but I don't let it beat me. Yes, I will spend less time outside and yes, it's not ideal but you cannot let the air temperature rule your life.

What makes it really Winnipeg cold is it is bright and sunny to add to the frigid temperatures. It looks cold. The snow looks crisp there is a lot of exhaust fog coming from every vehicle on the road. It's one of those days when you sit in your car, the springs don't compress.

I moved away from Manitoba to get away from, amongst other things, the cold winters. The good part is it is not nearly as dark in Ottawa in the winter, the sun comes up earlier and goes down later than in Winnipeg. i even noticed, that even though the sun was not up at 7am, the sky wasn't pitch black. This brings the hope of spring and renewal.

There are a couple of ways to put your mind over the cold. You can tell yourself it's not cold, but lets be honest, that only works so well. You can remind yourself that days like today make spring and summer so much better. That helps if it isn't cold for too many days in a row.

To really beat the cold you have to be tough. You have to make sure you don't give in, you wear warm clothes and you stay out of the wind. It's really the only way.

Ottawa has cold days but really doesn't have a cold winter. It's going to warm up, I'm going to grab my skates and I'm going to enjoy the canal because using the weather to your advantage is the best way to beat it.